The 24-year-old sprinter leaves tomorrow for Berlin where she will likely run the opening leg in the Australian 4x400 metres relay team at the world championships.

Steiner t played a vital part in Australia's qualification for the event in May at the Osaka Grand Prix in Japan when she ran a personal-best time of 52 seconds to give her teammates, Tamsyn Lewis, Madeleine Pape and Jodie Henry, a 10-metre lead after the first baton change.

Steinert, Lewis, Pape, Henry and Caitlin Pincott will vie for the four starting spots in the relay team after Jana Pittman-Rawlinson was ruled out due to a bulging disc in her back.

Steinert herself knows the cruelty of injury after suffering a debilitating stress fracture in her foot which stifled her development in 2008.

Now, with a winter of uninterrupted training behind her, Steinert expects to run even faster come August 23.

"I'm in good shape and everything is going really well and I'm very excited," Steinert said.

"My times have been consistent and I'm on target.

"I've got a couple of races lined up in Cologne as an individual runner before the worlds, so I'm very confident I'll run under 53 [seconds], and if I can do that, I'll be very happy."

But faced with the biggest crowd and situation of her athletics career, Steinert said beating her PB from Osaka was a possibility.

"It was obviously a massive PB," she said.

"I think when I'm over there with all the hype and being surrounded by the Australian team it makes you step up to that next level.

"An audience is there and the crowd is heaps bigger.

"I don't really know what to expect, but I'm confident I'll set a PB."

Steinert had only 10 minutes to discuss baton changes with her teammates before Osaka, but the Australians will have three weeks before the world championships to co-ordinate the relay.

"Obviously our baton changes should be a lot smoother and we should be even quicker than we were," she said.